Just teasing, Paul. Your word is almost as good as your plugs with me.

A few recent catches on the pichney stuff
 

Had some good outings in the last week. I put the mack colored pichney sand eel on and the fish couldn't keep off it... I eventually lost the plug on a RI rock...:crying: The white worked well also.
Next night I fished the 8" musso sr. slopehead and caught fish practically every cast for two hours.:fishin: No pics of the fish, but had close to 20 fish up to 20# on it. Funny thing was I couldn't get a touch with an eel and went to the plug...I then hit paydirt.

Can't believe what I was missing until I started building and fishing my own plugs...I'm gonna piss myself If I have any more fun...:uhuh:

More fun and more challenging than eels!!!! There....I said it...its out there!:stir::rude:

:laugha: Considering they wouldn't take an eel one night, it was actually easier with plugs...unhooking a thrashing fish while you're in a precarious position ain't easy though...in that situation I'd prefer an eel or single hook offering as you need not worry about the trebles. I did get one about 35# on an eel the first night though...everything else came on wood.

Here's the musso sr...it held up real well, but a large bluefish took a big chunk out of it.

Tagger took this for me
 

Bless him

Lose the barbs, Mike. I mean it, seriously. You don't need them, particularly on large fish. You'll drop a few fish when they switch directions in close, but it beats hell out of having to go to an ER from where you sometimes fish. Also, if you are out on a rock, try a small lip gaff. Makes life much simpler. Nice plug, by the way, very nice.

LOL. I was just kidding too
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nice plugs and fish mike, you could use tags on the rear ends to eliminate a few of the points.

I actually have a sinister plan in mind next to crushing the barbs.:devil:

An old comrade of mine used to hand line commercially for striped bass way back off the Nantucket and Monomoy rips. One time he showed me a bunch of his plugs rigged up with 5/0 and 6/0 siwash hooks...he said the trebles would straighten out under the strain of the 600# hand line, so he put big singles on and the problem was solved. You'll miss a few more fish I'm sure, but a real large fish would have no problem taking everything down and unhooking would be much easier and safer. Landing a big fish in current would be much more likely too as you can apply much more pressure to the siwash hooks. You would likely cull out the smaller fish as they wouldn't be hooked as easily and damaged, which brings up a problem:

Despite the fun I had recently I put back a lot of real small fish that were severely damaged due to the treble hooks. There were punctured eyes, gills, and open gashes on many of them after the battle which I regret...there is a lot to be said for single hook fishing(eels, jigs, shads, etc.) in terms of releasing fish in good shape as one single penetration in the mouth area has to be better than mulitple site punctures inflicted by trebles...just a thought.

Gonna re-rig the big swimmers this week with singles and see what happens.

Not if you're in your wetsuit :)

Dave,

You're a very consciencious observer.:laugha:

Does it seem unusual for the amount of paint to come off that's shown in my picture? Seems like the VMC's are so sharp they just pluck the paint right off and puncture the sys3 pretty easily. I got about 20 fish on that plug, so I figured the damage wasn't too bad given the number of fish I took on it. Plus, a giant bluefish mangled the thing pretty badly.

They look better that way..:uhuh:

Nice fish and pluggage!

No, they don't look bad to me for twenty fish.

Here's one from a few weeks ago (when I still knew how to fish) that ate a Tagger needle......... the best needle I've ever fished (although his large ones are damn good, too).

A similar sized fish from the summer (one of only a few I found) that ate one of those parrot musso clone darters I carry on about.

Nice fish

Good day today. Best fish came on one of BigFish Larry's early pencils. 24#. Thanks Larry (and Matt, who gave it to me).

Bad today. But the one fish I found was decent. Yellow large Donny clone surface swimmer.

Nice fish, You earned those especially with H pressure right on top of us and NNW wind, nice job

Great stuff George!

Poor dog looks like he has to go to the bathroom and you're caught up taking pictures...

Yup,tail position gives it away.

nice job George. Was that the day Art was over there too? He told me you got a good one.

well not all lures are made of wood. Friend and MV resident just sent me this pic from today.

You left too soon :smash:

Just for interest. Note the color of the plug and time of day.

neat. funny as I had my best luck trolling tubes this year using black, which I always use at nite, but did real good during daylight hours too.

its nice when you come back from somewhere havent fished in 2 weeks and get hit by this little guy the first cast. all were about that size tonight. same Rickski metal lip. sweet paint job. olive pink scale to white belly and red chin splash:love:

Here's the plug that was working the other night. (fish pics in habs tally thread).

These little plugs have broken many a skunk. Weighs about 1.6oz, made of maple, casts a mile, and will reach the bottom. Affectionately called: stubby squid needle.